Training A New
by shadowthorn12039
Summary: The war never happened, and Tris and Tobias train initiates together as Four and Six. But when one of the new initiates starts having a crush on Tris, and another one of the initiates is... similar to her on a mental scale, things get complicated.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1.**

 **Tris POV.**

"Tris," Tobias says. "Wake up Tris, new initiates are coming today."

I groan, taking the pillow out from under my head and shoving it on my own face.

"C'mon, Tris." He puts his hand on my waist.

I sigh. "Fine." I turn to look at him.

He smiles a little and kisses my cheek before getting out of bed and putting a shirt on.

"Who do you think is going to jump first?" I say, hugging my pillow.

"I don't know." He shrugs. "Maybe Abnegation?"

I laugh. "Yeah right." I get up and out of bed.

"Okay, Tris, as of today, I bid you Six," he says.

I smile as I walk up to him.

"Alright, _Four_." We kiss. He puts his hand on my cheek. His fingertips are soft, and warm. When he pulls away, he checks his watch and says, "The new initiates should be arriving in half an hour. Get ready, I'll meet you down by the net." He gives me another kiss on the lips and leaves our apartment.

I change into one of the normal black shirts that I wear, that is sort of baggy and makes me look smaller than I actually am, but I like it, and put on some jeans. Makeup is something that I never wear, so I don't wear any.

When I get down to the net where the initiates will be introduced, Tobias is already there.

"Hey," he says. "They should be getting here in just a minute."

"Okay," I say.

Christina stands just a few feet away, chewing on a piece of gum.

"Heard that there are going to be at least ten this year," she says, picking at a silver piercing that she got a few days ago in her left eyebrow. "I wonder who's jumping first."

I stare up the giant gap above us, even though I know I won't be able to see anything.

"Hey," Tobias says, sensing my uneasiness. "You've been able to train two other batches of initiates, you'll do fine with these ones too."

I nod and smile at him. He smiles back.

And that's when the first jumper falls into the net with a high-pitched yell.

Christina helps them off of the net. The first jumper is…

* * *

 **Okay, guys, I need your help for this o** **ne. I need ten transfers for me to put into this story. PM me what you think they should look like, and they might be included into the story.**

 **Remember to give me a name, faction, and appearance.**

 **I'm counting on you!**

 **If there are to little, I'll just create some more, so don't rush!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Tris POV.**

Amity, the first jumper is Amity.

"I can't believe it," Christina says. "An Amity, the first jumper? I think that's a new record."

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Tiffany," she says unsteadily. Whether she is going to cry, or break out into a fit of laughter, I can't tell. Her eyes roam the room, scanning with curiosity.

Her eyes find Tobias, but she doesn't give him a second glance. It's happened before where new initiates find interest in Tobias, but this girl doesn't seem to care.

"Make the announcement, Six," Tobias says, he slyly winks at me. I turn to the crowd of Dauntless that gather to watch the new initiates fall into the net and yell, "First jumper, Tiffany!" They all cheer, and Tiffany smiles.

The net whips and cradles another body. I reach my hand out to help him across the net.

Just as Christina speculated, there are ten transfers.

Amity: Tiffany. First jumper. Olive skin, green eyes, short blonde hair.

Candor: Erin. Second. Tan skin, obsidian eyes, long black hair put up in a ponytail on the back of her head.

Erudite: Marcy. Third. Golden eyes, light brown skin, curly brown hair.

Amity: Drake. Fourth. Dark skin, green eyes, black hair.

Candor: Percy. Fifth. Black hair, tan skin, hazel eyes.

Erudite: Jordan. Sixth. Pale white skin, brown hair, green eyes.

Abnegation: Elena. Seventh. Blonde hair, silver eyes, bronze skin. Already a warrior, didn't get the chance to jump first.

Candor: Melissa. Eighth. Light brown hair, dark green eyes, could be mistaken for brown, olive skin.

Candor: Chloe. Ninth. Brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes.

And lastly, Abnegation: Parker. Tenth. Brown hair, blue eyes, white skin.

Once all of the transfers are off the net and have composed themselves, Tobias and I lead them through the hallways to the Pit. We stop in front of the doors to the Pit to introduce ourselves. Christina leads the Dauntless-borns to the dining hall, since they don't need a tour around the place.

Since there are only six Dauntless-borns, they only need one person to train them. Well, Tobias can probably train this many transfers by himself, he did for my group, but he insists on letting me help.

"We will be training you initiates, so I expect you to follow our rules," Tobias says. I was zoning out so much, I must have missed some of his little speech that he does whenever new initiates arrive. It's not always the same, but similar.

"My name is Four," he says.

"My name is Six," I say. Now it's my turn to give a little speech. "You are about to enter the Pit, the heart of the Dauntless compound. It—" I notice two Candor whispering to each other. "You got something to say?" I say, and they stop.

"Um, no, ma'am. We were just wondering why both of your names are numbers." _Candor_.

"That is none of your concern, initiate," I say. "Listen up."

Tobias steps in and says the rest. When he finishes, we show them the Pit, and the Chasm, which a bunch of the Erudite found interesting.

At dinner, one of the Abnegation sits next to me, Elena, I think it was. She looks better in black than she did grey. Her personality feels like she belongs in Dauntless, this was a good choice for her.

And she also doesn't know what a hamburger is.

"You've never had a hamburger before?" a Candor girl named Chloe next to her says.

"No, is that what it's called?" I exchange a look with Tobias from across the room, nodding my head at them. The conversation that they're having is the exact same one that Christina and I had on our first day in Dauntless.

Christina, who is sitting next to me, nudges me with her arm, smiling a little. She must be listening in on that conversation as well.

I rub my knuckles on the top of her head and she cringes away. I laugh, and the Abnegation and Candor that is sitting next to me looks at me with surprise. I must have come off as pretty serious for them to be surprised that I _laughed_ after meeting me only an hour before.

I feel someone pat me on the head and look up just as Uriah passes, a smug smile on his face. We have this ongoing inside joke where one of us past the other on the head while the other is oblivious. That was his fifth in a row. I have only gotten him three times.

When we finish dinner, Tobias and I show the initiates to the dorm.

"You mean we all have to sleep in the _same room?"_ a Candor named Percy asks.

"Yes," I say. "We had to do it, you have to do it. The Dauntless-borns are doing the same thing." They all groan and start to protest, but I say, "If I hear one more of you complain about it, you're Factionless. Get comfortable, it's going to be a _long_ time." Tobias and I walk away, leaving them to do their own thing. We walk back to our apartment together, careful not to run into any of our initiates on the way there. We don't want them to know that we are together, because they are our initiates and them knowing won't be very good.

On the way there, we pass Uriah talking to someone in a hallway. As we pass, I pat him on the head and keep walking.

"What is going on?" Tobias asks.

"Inside joke," I reply. We get back to our apartment not to long after.

The time is 6:00 when we wake up that morning. Tobias wakes me up, I grumble for a little bit, we get ready, and we go down to the training room where we are going to meet our initiates.

We don't know their names very well, that's why we are going to have them introduce themselves again. They all line up against the wall and introduce themselves, then we start the lesson.

I hand out all the guns, and Tobias teaches them how to fire and handle the recoil. That Amity girl, Tiffany, is a fast learner. She weighs the gun in her hand before lifting it to the target. It is only the first time that she fires that the recoil surprises her. After that, she is learning faster than all of the others.

The Abnegation named Elena is pretty good too, for that fact that she used to be in Abnegation.

A weird group, this one is.

I observe the class most of the time, since I haven't had much experience training initiates as Tobias.

I don't know how the jumping off a train thing went, since I wasn't there, but one of the things we don't have to teach them is that, since they already know how because they have done it already. It's still hard to believe that the first thing that initiates do is jump on and off a train, then jump off a roof right after.

I lean against the door frame as I watch Tobias teach. I notice a couple of initiates giving me worried glances, as if they fear that I will notice something they are doing wrong and kick them out because of it, but I wouldn't do that. Ever since Eric and Max went Factionless because people found out that they were working with Jeanine Matthews to start a war, the people training the initiates have gotten less harsh. But the cuts are still there. Something about some of the leaders still liking that idea.

Tobias and I told our initiates about it when we showed them their dormitory the night before, and of course, no one liked it, but we don't really have a choice. The cameras in the training room watch our every move, how we teach them, if an initiate is doing terrible but we just let them do bad. That's one of the reasons we have so much discipline, because we know people are watching.

I have also gotten plenty of offers to take one of Eric or Max's place in the Dauntless leaders, but I refused. I don't want to be one of those people to be so busy all the time, too busy for Tobias.

After Tobias finishes, he dismisses them to go eat dinner or something.

The entire initiate class leave massaging their hands that held their guns.

As I walk into the dining hall, Uriah is sitting at a table on the way to the one I am going to. As I walk, I reach out to pat him on the head, but he catches my wrist. "Nuh-uh-uh," he says, grinning. "Not getting me again." He reaches forward and pats me on the head, then he lets go of my wrist. I glare at him as I walk the rest of the way to my table, a couple of my initiates staring back and forth at Uriah and me.

When I sit down next to her, Christina asks, "What has been going on with you two? Patting each other on the head all the time."

I smirk. "Inside joke."

"You're _weird_."

We eat the rest of our food and walk around the Pit together.

"So, how have you and Four been?" she asks.

"Good. How have you and Will been?"

"Good."

We keep walking silently. I _hate_ it when this happens, when we have nothing really to say. We stop at the Chasm. I lean against the railing, listening to the rushing water.

"I wonder what it was like," I say. "To be Al. Standing here, heart set on jumping." I stare down into the darkness beneath me.

I hear someone call my and Christina's name and turn around to see Will. "Hey!" he says grinning. He gives Christina a kiss and turns to me. "How have you been, Tris?"

I shrug. "Good. But it's Six now, since, you know, initiates."

" _Right_. Forgot about that." One of Will's friends calls him to come over to them. "I got to go," he says. "See you later, _Six."_ He winks at me and leaves.

I wave at him as he walks away.

Christina and I walk around the Pit some more, until we decide that it's getting late and we should probably go to bed.

When I get back to my apartment, Tobias is already there, brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

"I'm back," I say, closing the door. He spits and rinses his mouth out with water.

"Hey," he says. He walks out of the bathroom. He comes up to me and brushed the hair off my forehead, so he can kiss it.

I get ready for bed, then lay down next to Tobias. He puts his arm around me and I close my eyes to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Tris POV.**

The next day, I need to wake up early again. Of course.

I groan as Tobias shakes me awake. "Tris," he says. I can almost _hear_ the smile on his face.

"Why do I even need to be part of the lessons? You already teach them everything."

"Today we're teaching them fighting techniques," he says, "maybe you can… give a demonstration?"

My eyes shoot open and I sit up. "You would allow me to beat up my own initiates?"

He laughs. " _Maybe_."

I get ready fast, and we go down to the training room together. The initiates are already lined up, waiting for us to arrive. When we enter, they are talking to each other. But the moment that they see us, they go quiet.

"Initiates," I say. Tobias steps away and stands a little ways to the left, leaving a bunch of nervous initiates under my control.

I grin.

"Today, I'm teaching you fighting techniques." They all shift uncomfortably. "Anyone willing to help demonstrate?" None of them step up. "Then I guess that I'll be _choosing_." I walk up the line of initiates, looking for the most nervous one. Then my eyes fall on an initiate from Candor. Percy.

"You," I say, pointing at him.

He takes a step back. "M—me?"

"You heard me. Come on." I stand in the middle of the arena and beckon him to come. I get into fighting position. "Mimic me," I say. He tries to do the same stance that I am, only his leg is to far back and his knees aren't bent. He is also holding his arms too far away from his body.

I circle around him, then I kick the back of one of his knees, causing his knee to buckle and he almost falls over. "Bend your knees. Don't put your leg so far back." I grab his wrists, adjusting where he is holding them. "Always keep your arms close to your body when you are not attacking." I hear whispering behind me and turn to see the two Amity transfers having a conversation.

"This goes to all of you!" I say, grabbing their attention. "Pay attention! I'm not going to say it again." They stay quiet this time. Tobias shows a smug smile as he leans against the door frame.

"Make sure you put all of your power into each punch." I demonstrate on a punching bag and have Percy punch. I want to at least give him a chance to know even a little what he's doing before we square off.

I teach him a couple of punches, a couple of kicks, then it's my time to shine.

I stand in the arena.

"Last chance for someone to switch out with Percy here. Anyone?" Percy looks at everyone individually with pleading eyes. It kind of makes me feel bad that I am about to beat him so easily.

No one steps up.

"Okay then, just you and me."

We both stand in the arena.

"Come at me," I say, getting into position. "Newbie strikes first."

He hesitates a little, before running at me and thrusting a fist at my face. I dodge easily and get behind him. Before he can turn around, I do a sweeping kick and knock him off his feet. He lands on the ground and I press my shoe to his throat. Not hard enough to stop him breathing, but hard enough to scare the crap out of him.

The rest of the initiates gasp.

I blow a piece of hair from my face as I help my terrified initiate off the ground. "Who's next?"

The rest of the training session I call up initiates one at a time.

I beat them all, of course.

At the end of the day I stand in front of them as they cradle injured arms or examine bruises.

"After you get the hang of the fighting, you will be pitted against each other. The score of the first stage of initiation depends solely on your skills in fighting. The higher score you get, the more likely you are to get into stage two. Got that?" They all nod. "Dismissed." And they file out of the room.

One of the boys, Drake, I think his name was, lingers for a second, staring at me. "You got something to say, initiate?" I say, crossing my arms. His face turns red and he leaves.

I walk back over to Tobias.

"Looks like you had fun," he says grinning.

"Yeah, I did."

He takes one of his hands out of his pockets and puts it across my shoulders, his hand sliding through my hair. "This new batch is an odd one."

"Yeah."

We walk out of the training room together.

As we are walking through one of the hallways, I feel someone pat me on the head. Uriah runs past.

"Uriah!" I yell after him.

"This 'inside joke' seems to be getting serious," Tobias says.

I sigh, and we keep walking. Tobias goes off to the control room not long later, leaving me alone to explore.

As I walk across the Pit, I catch a glimpse of some of my initiates, watching me, from the corner of my eye. Erin, Jordan, and Elena. I bet that they are the Peter, Drew, and Molly of the group.

I try to act like they are not there, until they start to approach me.

"Hey, Six!" one of them calls out. And now it's impossible to ignore them.

"What?" I say, annoyed, when they catch up to me.

"We were wondering if you could give us some private lessons," Erin says.

"Why? I'm teaching everyone the same things. You get nothing different from having separate lessons."

"Well, yeah, but don't we count as more advanced? We're better than everyone else."

I feel anger flare in my chest. "Then you won't need private lessons to get better, won't you? Now, if you'll excuse me." I start to walk away as if I have somewhere to go, but Jordan grabs my arm to stop me. I stare down at his hand.

"Get your hand off me, initiate, or being sore isn't going to be the only thing that hurts." I put an edge in my voice to make it seem more intimidating.

He takes his hand away, holding it close to his chest as if recoiling from a python that just struck. I walk away, clenching my fists. I can't take favor in the stronger ones, like Eric did with Peter, Drew, and Molly, I need to teach the weaker ones to overcome the stronger ones that have gotten used to being better. Either that, or just beat up the stronger ones. I wouldn't object to that.

The dining hall is packed with people, like always. Christina isn't sitting at our table, but sitting at a different one, chatting with some of the Dauntless-born initiates. I grab a tray of food and sit in my usual seat. The seat that Christina usually uses is taken by one of my initiates, Drake. When I sit down, he tenses up.

The whole time it takes to finish my food, I notice him glancing at me occasionally. And any time I see him look, I look back at him and he turns away with his face bright red.

I lock eyes with Tobias from across the room where he is chatting with Zeke and nod head in the direction of Drake, and he understands. I don't usually jump to conclusions, but the signs are all there. This boy has a crush on me.

It's happened before where people have a crush on Tobias, but never me. I'm just not very flattering.

After I finish my food and start to leave the dining hall, I can _feel_ his eyes on me. It makes me uncomfortable, so I try to get out of there as fast as possible without looking like it. When I get into the hallway, Tobias is there waiting.

"Hey," he says. "That kid causing you trouble or something? Or is it just a crush?"

"Just a crush."

It feels weird discussing this subject with Tobias, but we did the same thing when initiates had a thing for him last year. He is also acting like it is a completely normal occurrence that people have crushes on me. Which isn't true.

"But it's not a big deal. He's bound to figure out that I am taken eventually." I step a little closer to him and he grins.

"I know not to think that you would fall for anyone else."

"You got that right." I lean up and kiss him, then we start walking back to our apartment.

On our way there, we hold hands, and I notice one of our initiates seeing us and leaning over to their friend to tell them all about it, but I don't care.

We get back to our apartment, and get ready for bed, then lay down together.

We face each other in the bed, staring in to one another's eyes. He puts his hand on my cheek and presses his forehead to mine.

"I love you, you know that?" he says.

I laugh a little and kiss him. "I love you, too."

 **The next day.**

"Today you will be using what I taught you yesterday, in a real fight," I say to my initiates as we stand in the training room. They exchange nervous glances with one another. Tobias leans against the wall behind me to observe.

I just put up who will be fighting who on the white-board.

Tiffany V. Elena.

Jordan V. Marcy.

Erin V. Percy.

Melissa V. Drake.

Cloe V. Parker.

I made sure to make it so that it is more or less evenly matched, with the weaker ones fighting the weaker ones, and the stronger ones fighting the stronger ones.

"Tiffany, Elena, you're first."

They square off in the arena. All goes smoothly, Elena punches a few times, Tiffany blocks and comes back with a punch to the face, and Elena falls over and doesn't get up.

"Next is Jordan and Marcy," I announce. Percy claps Marcy on the shoulder before she enters the ring.

This fight takes longer. Both of them are very skillful fighters, despite having only one day's worth of training. Marcy wins after giving Jordan a black eye and a bloody nose.

"Erin, Percy."

Percy wins just barely, managing to dodge a punch that would have easily knocked him out and coming back with a hard kick to the stomach that leaves Erin on the ground coughing.

"Melissa and Drake."

Melissa punches Drake hard enough in the face to send him sprawling on the floor, groaning.

"Cloe and Parker next."

Surprisingly, Parker wins after getting lucky with a punch.

I tell them that the same thing is going to be happening the next day, and to be prepared for that, and dismiss them. When Tobias approaches me again, I say, "Sorry. I sort of stole the spotlight for this class."

"Hey, I don't mind. It's fun seeing you teach stuff," he says, then he looks away, as if what he just said was embarrassing.

I smile. It's pretty funny when he's flustered like that.

I go on my tiptoes and kiss him. He grins at me, his face red. Weird how he still gets flustered when I do something like just kiss him, even though we've been together for two years.

"Come on," I say. "I need a nap."

"But—"

"You are coming with me, because I don't feel like sleeping alone right now," I interrupt before he can finish his sentence.

He laughs. "All right, fine. If you _insist_." He takes my hand and we start heading up. I close and lock the door behind us and lie down, and he lies down facing me.

"Hey, Tris?" he says.

"Yeah?"

"You want to know something?"

"What is it?"

"Did you know that I actually had a thing for you all the way since the beginning of your initiation?"

"Hmm… not very surprising," I say, tapping my chin. "Come to think of it, I had a thing for _you_ since the beginning."

"What, really?"

"Yeah." I grin. "Surprised?"

He grabs my face and kisses me.

"What was that for?" I say.

He shrugs. "I just wanted to kiss you."

I grin and pull closer to him, pressing my lips to his.

After we kiss for a while, we lay dozing off. I didn't even think about it, but we skipped dinner just to go to bed early.


	4. Chapter 4

**Tris POV. (Just so you know, it will _always_** **be Tris POV. None of this fanfic will be from anyone else's perspective.)**

The next day is the same as the last one, only the fighting is with different people than before.

"Elena and Marcy," I announce.

Winner: Elena.

"Cloe, Percy."

Winner: Percy.

"Jordan, Parker."

Winner: Jordan.

"Drake, Tiffany."

Winner: Tiffany.

"Erin, Melissa."

Winner: Erin.

After that is finished, I send them off.

The next day is the same again, with different people… again. But after I dismiss them, I start to get a little excited, because like it happened during my initiation, tonight they are going to be playing capture the flag. Dauntless-born and transfers combined into two teams. At least this time Eric isn't going to be here to order Tobias to throw knives at anyone afterwards. Tobias is going to be a team captain for one team, and I am going to be the team captain of the other with Christina. I need a chance to meet the Dauntless-born initiates, after all. It'll also be nice to be playing against Tobias in something for once.

After we barge into the dorm before they can fall asleep and bring them on the train, after picking out their guns, that's when we start picking who is going to be on our teams.

Elena is strong, but she is also not very smart about it. Tiffany is one of the better choices. She knows when someone is at their limit and will back down if necessary. Too bad Tobias chooses her before I can.

As much as I don't want it to happen, Drake goes on my team. He is good, at everything, basically. When I choose him, Tobias gives me a look. Blushing, Drake makes his over to my side of the train car.

The thing about Tobias and me, is that we both know who the better ones to choose are, so it's a battle on who is going to get the better ones.

After we choose, Tobias's team has half our transfers and Christina and I have the other half.

The transfers on Tobias's team: Tiffany, Marcy, Cloe, Erin, Elena, and three Dauntless-born.

My and Christina's team: Parker, Drake, Melissa, Jordan, and Percy, and three Dauntless born that Christina picked.

Since Tobias and I don't know who the Dauntless-born initiates are, Christina chooses who is going to be on our team and Tobias takes the rest. Unfair, I know, but Tobias got the good transfers.

"Your team jumps first," I say.

Tobias shrugs. "All right."

He waves his initiates along to jump before him.

"As of now, you are the enemy," he says to me with a smile on his face right before he leaps out of the train into the darkness.

I sigh and shake my head. The initiates that I chose stare at me. I look at them, and they look away immediately.

"Wow, you really got that death-glare down, Six, just like Four when he trained us two years ago," Christina says.

"Wait a second," Drake says. "Four was your guy's instructor?"

"Yes," I say, "what about it?"

"Nothing…"

"Good."

Christina punches me in the arm jokingly. "C'mon, we're nearing our stop." The initiates each jump out one-by-one, then It's Christina and me. "Bet you five credits I can do a flip and still land on my feet," she says.

"You're on." She bets this every time we play capture the flag, and she always fails.

We jump, and she does a flip in the air, but misses a step and lands on her butt. I stand above her, grinning.

I hold my hand out. "Pay up."

"Stupid gravity," she grumbles as she hands me five Dauntless credits.

I help her to her feet, then turn to the initiates. "Okay. They got the head-start, but we got the distance. Pick a place to hide the flag."

"What, _us_?" Percy says.

"This is a team effort, so yes. Pick a place you can agree on, and let's go. Confer with the Dauntless-borns because they know the place better than you do."

They chat for a little bit, then they settle for a spot with trees and place the tree as high as they can in a tree. I don't warn them to be careful about how high they put it, because the higher it is the easier the other team can see its glow. And something that I taught Tobias, was that it's always easier to find your target from higher ground. Especially if it's glowing and in the dark.

I don't say anything, because I want them to figure it out by themselves, to learn from this experience.

I sit away from the group, my gun rested against my shoulder just like Tobias did when I first played this game. I look up at the stars in the sky, at the constellations, and then that's when they attack. Yells burst out from all around us and I spring to my feet. I see Tobias appear from the shadows, holding his paintball gun out in front of him, grinning at me.

"Oh, it is _on_." I say. I aim my gun at him and squeeze the trigger, releasing a pellet full of paint. He somehow dodges it and fires at me, only to hit the tree next to me.

"You going easy on me, Four?" I say. I know that Tobias _never_ misses what he's aiming for.

Chaos roars around us.

Tobias grins. He fires his gun and I duck behind a tree. I peak out from behind the tree just enough to stick my gun out and fire at him, only to miss.

"I'm starting to think that _you're_ the one who's going easy on _me,_ " he says.

This time, when I fire, I hit him in the arm before he can dodge.

I smirk. "Got you." Then a paintball hits me in the back and I turn to see Christina. "Come on, Christina! We're on the same team!"

"How does that change anything?"

That's when Cloe from Tobias's team gets a hold of the flag near the top of the tree.

"I got it!" she announces, waving the flag into the air. The rest of her team cheers and my team all let out a collective groan.

Tobias beams at me. "Looks like I win, _again_."

"Alright, alright. Fine. You won."

We get on the train not long after. I sit next to Tobias on one side of the car.

"You know, I'm getting kind of sick of losing this game," I say.

"Well, hey. It's sort of your fault that I know how to look."

I playfully nudge him with my shoulder. I notice Drake staring at me from across the car, but when he sees me notice, he looks away. Tobias follows my gaze across the car and I see a flare in his eyes… Jealousy? No. That can't be. Tobias would never be jealous of anyone. He knows that I would never fall for anyone other than him.

When we get back to the Dauntless compound, I let the initiates jump first, leaving Tobias in the car for a few seconds before we need to jump off. I look at him and smirk, and he smirks too, then we jump out together.

 **The next day.**

Tobias takes a deep breath as he aims at the target.

I love watching him do this. He just seems so focused, so sharp. He breaths in, and when he breaths out he throws the knife, which imbeds itself into the red spot in the middle of the target. The initiates let out a gasp, and I try to hide a grin. It always has that affect on people. He finishes explaining what to do and tells them to go at it.

Like most things, Tiffany is fast at learning how to aim the knives.

And for Parker it is an unexpected talent. The first couple of times that she throws at the target, she hits just the outer rim, but near the end of the training session, she manages to hit the middle of the target multiple times. I exchange a look with Tobias. It's not all the time that an initiate starts hitting the middle on the first day.

"Good job, Stiff," I say. The word "Stiff" seems foreign, as if I am speaking a completely different language for the first time. In the last initiation, the first one that I ever taught, there were no Abnegation transfers at all, but in this initiation, there are two.

Her face turns red. "U—um, than—thanks?"

Some of the other initiates didn't like me giving praise to Parker. I see Erin glare at Parker for a second before resuming. I wonder if that was a bad idea to tell her that I thought she was doing well in front of the rest of them.

Other initiates are pretty bad at it, too. Like Melissa. She still hasn't hit the target once. And Drake, who has hit the target, but not anywhere close to the middle of it. I go over too Melissa to give her a few pointers. "Inhale, aim, exhale, fire. Got that?" She nods and takes a deep breath, and when she lets it out she throws. The knife imbeds itself into the target's outer ring.

The corners of her mouth turn up a bit. "So that's what it's like to succeed at something." She throws another knife and it hits the target again, a little closer to the middle than last time. She looks at me nervously, waiting for me to tell her she did it wrong or something, but I just give her a thumbs-up and she grins and turns back to the target.

After training, I am walking down the hall when I hear voices coming from around the corner.

"—Yeah, but Six is _scary_. Why would you like her in that way? And besides, I think that her and Four are a thing. I mean, have you seen the way they look at each other?" It's Cloe's voice.

"I don't care!" Drake. "She's so pretty, and fierce, and—"

" _And_ two years older than you!"

"That's not the point! Besides, _Four_ is two years older than her." He says the word "Four" like he is spitting out a piece of rotten food.

"How would you know that?"

"I figure it out after I heard Christina say it during capture the flag."

Perceptive _._ Christina didn't even say it directly that Tobias is two years older than me.

"That still doesn't mean that you can make a move on her!" Cloe says.

"Well then, what am I gonna do? I can't help how I feel about her," says Drake.

"I doubt that she feels the same way about you."

"I know that!"

"It doesn't really seem like it!"

"I—I need to go," he says, his voice breaking.

"Okay. But don't do anything that you'll regret, okay?"

"Okay."

Drake walks away down the hall, and I turn around to leave.

He doesn't care that I'm taken, which means that he is bound to try and make a move eventually.

I walk down the hall in the direction I came from, because I don't want it to look like I was listening, then turn around because I still need to get to where I'm going, which is back to my apartment, and it's pretty important that I get back there. As I walk back, I pass Cloe in the hallway. She is just casually leaning against the wall, her eyes closed. When she hears me approach, her eyes shoot open and she stares at me as I walk past. What a coincidence that my apartment is in the same hall that she is standing in. I take out my key and unlock the door. Tobias is in the control room, working on stuff. No doubt he just watched me get home from the camera that is attached to the wall at the end of the hall that I just walked down. He does that every time I get home before him.

When I get back, I place my keys on the table and take off my jacket, hanging it on the back of a chair. Underneath my jacket, I wear a tight shirt that reveals the tattoo on my collarbone. Not something that I would wear very often, but I wanted to wear it today, so I wore it.

I take the knife that I keep on me at all times since Peter, Drew, and Al attacked me that one time, out of my pocket, and start casually flipping it in my palm as I walk into the kitchen. I notice something sitting on the counter, a note on top of a piece of Dauntless cake wrapped in cling wrap. I pick up the note and start reading it.

 _VI-_

 _Taking the night shift at the control room, will be gone most of the night, so I gave you some cake to ask for forgiveness._

 _-IV._

I shake my head and take the piece of cake off the counter. I go and grab a book that Caleb recommended to me the last visiting day, when he came and visited me, and read as I eat. It is about water-filtration, but I decide to give it a chance. There is a little Erudite in me, after all, maybe I will find it interesting.

I was wrong.

Why would Caleb even _like_ this?

I place it down and finish eating my cake.

After that, I go to take a shower. The warm water washes over me, clean and refreshing. I put shampoo and conditioner in my hair and wash it out again. It still feels a little weird to have short hair. It wasn't too long ago that I cut it. When I did, Tobias seemed really happy about it, but I never understood why. Maybe I just look better with short hair, less like the Abnegation whenever I put it up, because it's not long enough to become a bun.

I step out of the shower and get dressed. And just as I am about to open the door to the bathroom to leave, I hear a noise, and stop cold in my tracks. It can't be Tobias, because he's in the control room right now. It shouldn't be anyone else, either, because Tobias would be able to see if someone is entering and warn me about it.

I grab the knife that I placed next to the sink before I got into the shower and start slowly opening the door. I look around, checking underneath the bed, in the kitchen, even back in the bathroom just in case someone slipped into there while I was looking elsewhere, but come up with nothing.

When I go to bed, I leave the lamp at my bedside on, because I can't help but be paranoid about it. Especially since Tobias isn't here with me.

I fall asleep alert, and very aware of everything in the room.

Sometime during the night Tobias returns and kisses my forehead before turning of the light and laying down with me. I am too tired to do anything, so I just fall asleep again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Tris POV.**

That morning Tobias wakes me up, and for once I am not grumbly at all about leaving.

After the training session, Christina invites me to hang out with her and go shopping around the Pit. Christina is one of those girls that goes shopping for new clothes almost on a daily basis, and is always wearing a crop-top, or shorts that end at the top of her thighs, right underneath her butt. But today she is wearing neither. She is wearing a normal sweatshirt, and normal jeans.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey, are you okay?" I ask. She seems fragile, and not like Christina at all.

"Will and I, um… we had an argument."

"What happened?"

"Well I... caught him with another girl…"

" _What_?" Anger flares in my chest. Why would Will ever do that to Christina? It pains me to see my friend like this, heartbroken.

"Christina, I'm so sorry." I touch her elbow.

She wipes under her eyes and takes a deep breath. "Anyway, I was lying when I said that we were going shopping."

Someone suddenly pats me on my head and puts an arm across my shoulders. Uriah. "We're going ziplining to cheer Christina up," he says cheerfully. Lynn and Marlene appear from behind him out of nowhere.

"And why does that mean that you need to make people think we're doing something else?"

"Because we're not allowed to do it, duh," Uriah says. He rests his other hand on his own hip, to look cooler, or something.

"So, you coming or not?" Lynn asks, grinning.

I think for a second. Christina would be happier if I came along, but I can't just go without telling anyone. But looking at Christina's face, I realize that it doesn't matter. She needs something that will distract her from what is going on in her life right now.

"Okay. I'll come."

Christina grins. "Let's go, then. We'll miss the train if we don't."

The next thing I know, we are standing outside on the platform, waiting for the train to arrive so we can jump on and ride to the Hub. It has been such a long time since I have gone ziplining, the last time that I did was during my initiation, when Zeke and Uriah were still basically strangers to me. Now, with how close I am to Uriah, the idea that we weren't friends until we were 16 seems absurd, even though it's true.

I catch a glimpse of the shine of the metal train in the sunlight. When the train starts thundering past, we all start jogging with it until we see an open car. I grab the handle, the feeling almost natural at this point, since I have done it so many times. I swing myself into the car almost as easily as Tobias. When we get in, I sit next to Christina against the wall.

I touch her shoulder and say low enough that the others won't hear, "You okay?"

She nods.

Uriah sits at the door, next to Marlene, his legs dangling outside the train as it moves lazily over the tracks. I have noticed that he has been hanging out with Marlene a lot lately, more than just a "friend" would hang out. "Hey, Tris," he says. My friends that I have known long enough can call me Tris when no one else is around.

"Yeah?"

"You remember the first time we went ziplining?"

"Of course."

"You remember how _scared_ you were?"

"Dude, I wasn't _scared_ , you were the only one that actually screamed out of all of us," I say.

"I was not!"

" _Guys_ ," Christina butts in. "Can you _please_ shut up?"

The train starts getting closer to the Hub, so we stand up and go to the opening of the train car. Christina, Lynn, and Marlene jump first, and I look at Uriah and he looks back at me, then we both jump at the same time. Uriah manages to do a flip in the air and land on his feet, his hands outstretched to keep his balance, like Christina keeps trying to do, but failing.

We go over to the Hub.

"I came here earlier and turned on the power, so we don't have to climb the stairs a hundred floors," Uriah says, pressing the elevator button.

"I've never gone on the zipline before," says Christina.

"Really?" Lynn says. "I think that I have been on it at least ten times since initiation."

"Yeah, well I haven't really had much time to do anything fun, okay?"

The elevator makes a dinging noise and the doors open and we walk inside. Like he did the first time we came here, Uriah fixes his hair in the reflection of the elevator door. I reach up and mess his hair up just when the elevator doors open again so he can't see himself anymore.

"Hey!" he says. He shoves me away from him. "You know how _long_ it took to style that this morning?"

"Oops, sorry. Does that count?"

He shoves me again and starts climbing up the ladder, grumbling about hair. When he reaches the top, he turns around and holds the ladder secure for the next person. Christina shakes out her hands and takes a deep breath, then climbs. I climb after her. The wind picks up the moment that I step off the ladder.

Uriah goes and grabs a bunch of harnesses and hooks one of them on to the cable. "Marlene, you go first," he says.

"Okay." Marlene goes forward and gets into the harness head first. She puts her fists out if front of her and goes, "I shall go rescue damsels in distress!" Uriah laughs as he straps her in and guides her to the edge of the building. He counts down from three and launches her down the chord.

Marlene lets out a loud whoop of joy as she zips down the line at high speeds until I can only see a tiny black dot in the distance, and then nothing at all.

"Okay." Uriah rubs his hands together. "Who wants to go next?"

"I'll go," Lynn says.

Uriah clips the harness on the chord and Lynn gets in and secured.

"Ready?" Uriah says. "One, two—" he pushes her down before he gets to three. As she zips down, I hear her yell, "Uriah I am going to _kill_ you!" Her voice is faint, but I can still hear it.

Uriah chuckles. "Okay, Tris, you go next. I want Christina to go last right before me."

"Wait, but how do you get yourself in the harness?" Christina asks.

"Don't worry about it. Tris?"

I walk forward and get in the harness. "You better not trick me," I say as I lay face-first on my stomach.

"Aw, c'mon. When have I _ever_ tricked you?"

He counts down from three, and just as he lets go, he pats me on the head. Dammit, that's two in one day. I need to up my game.

The wind pushes at me and tangles into my hair. It is cold on my face. When I get to the bottom, Marlene and Lynn are there, watching me.

When I fall to the ground, I land weirdly on my foot and pain shoots up my leg. I fall over.

"Are you okay?" Marlene asks. I try to stand up but fall over again. It seems like I sprained my ankle. I manage to stand and act like it was nothing, even though my ankle is throbbing so much it takes immense concentration not to cry out.

When Lynn and Marlene are convinced that I am fine, which I'm not, Marlene asks, "Did you have fun?"

"Marlene, sweet, innocent soul," Lynn says. "Why the hell do you think that she would go on it again if she didn't think that it was fun?"

I notice a dot on the line in the distance getting closer. "Wait, guys, it's Christina," I say. They turn around and start cheering.

"Go Christina!" Marlene shouts.

"You'd better not die!" Lynn yells.

They both look at me expectantly.

I clear my throat. "Um… You got this, Christina!"

I hear her scream as she flies through the air. Her scream turns to laughter as she slows down and comes to a stop right above us. By the time she is on solid ground, she is laughing so hard that she is on her hands and knees. It makes me happy to see her so happy.

"Did you like it?" I ask.

She looks at me, grinning. "When can I go again?"

Lynn and Marlene and I exchange looks, smiling.

"I wonder where I've heard _that_ before," Lynn says. She pokes me in the ribs.

Marlene looks over at the top of the Hub. "Uriah's sure taking a while," she says.

"It's probably hard to strap yourself into a harness," says Lynn. "He should be coming down soon." Just as she says it, I hear Uriah let out a yell at the top of his lungs as he zips down the line.

" _There_ he is," Marlene says.

Uriah lets out another yell. "AHHH!"

I laugh aloud. "I think he's having fun."

 **Time jump.**

When we get back to the Dauntless compound, it is starting to get dark outside. I approach my and Tobias's apartment, trying to hide my limp, and open the door. Tobias is already inside, and when he sees me, he says, "Where have you been? I was getting a little worried."

"I was with friends." I sit down on one of the chairs at our table, so I don't have to stand on my ankle. "Christina and Will are having issues so Uriah, Lynn, Marlene and I were cheering her up."

"Issues?"

"She caught him with someone else."

"Oh."

I check the time. 8:00. Time seems to have passed faster. It must be getting later into the season. I run my hands through my hair to try and get the tangles out. I start to stand up, but then I stumble because of my ankle.

"What's wrong?" Tobias say, coming over to my side and helping me up.

"I think I hurt my ankle."

"And you decided not to tell me about it?"

"It didn't seem serious."

He guides me to our bed and has me sit down on it, so he can examine my foot. He flexes my ankle and I wince.

"It looks broken," he says. He looks up at me. "What were you guys doing?"

"We went ziplining."

"How did you hurt it?"

"At the bottom of the zipline, when I was trying to get back to the ground."

He leans back onto his knees. "I can go get you a splint, if you like. I'm sure there's one somewhere."

"That would be great, thanks."

He leaves me alone in our apartment.

After a couple of minutes of trying to stand on my foot, I decide that it is hopeless, and I need to figure out something else to do in the meantime. I use the walls for balance as I make my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. As I turn a corner, I start to fall, but I feel something brush against my side and gently push me back against the wall. A shiver goes down my spine. I look and see nothing. But the feeling of being watched is now imprinted into my mind.

I know when someone is there.

"Who's there?" I call out. No answer. Maybe it was just me pulling myself up again. I hope it was just me pulling myself up again.

I finally make my way to the kitchen and get a glass of water. I suddenly feel something touch my back and I drop the glass, causing it to shatter against the ground, and spin around to see that nothing is there. I am starting to get even more paranoid.

When Tobias returns, I silently promise myself that I will never let myself be alone in our apartment again unless absolutely necessary.

Tobias wraps my ankle and puts it in a splint. "You should try to stay off it as much a possible for the time being, okay?" he says.

I nod.

"You should also skip training the initiates tomorrow. You won't be able to do much with your ankle like that. Tomorrow is also when we are doing the fear simulations."

"No, no. I can still train them. Or at least watch you train them. It's much more interesting than staying at home all day." I say it mostly because it's true, but I also say it because I can't help but feel like someone's watching me… At least, when I'm alone. I have noticed that I don't get that feeling whenever Tobias is with me.

"Why don't we go to bed?" he says. "You seem tired."

I yawn. "Yeah, I kind of am." Since I am already sitting at the edge of the bed, I just lay down and try to get into a comfortable position that won't make it so that my ankle hurts as much.

Tobias lays down behind me and turns off the light. He puts his arms around me and kisses my neck once. "Goodnight."


	6. Chapter 6

**Tris POV.**

That morning, I wake up by myself this time. Mostly from the pain in my ankle. Tobias is still asleep behind me, and I am still really tired, but I doubt that I will be able to fall asleep again since my ankle already has me wide-awake, so I just stay there with Tobias. I turn around so that I am facing him and watch him sleep. His mouth is slightly parted, and his eyes are closed. I get the familiar urge to kiss him but decide not to because I don't want to wake him up.

Then I decide to just do it anyway.

I lean over and press my lips to his. He doesn't even wake up. Makes sense, sometimes he is a heavy sleeper, sometimes he isn't. I've been with Tobias long enough to know that. Regardless, he always wakes up on time, without an alarm clock because he doesn't want anything to wake me up other than me or him.

I lay with him, my eyes closed, just enjoying his company until he wakes up.

When he finally wakes up, we get ready and go down to the training room. And all the way there he keeps a hand on my arm to help me keep balanced.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay home?" he says as we walk the last hallway to the room that the initiates will be going through the second stage of initiation: the fear simulations.

"I'm sure." I don't want to stay home since whenever I'm alone weird things start to happen.

Tobias is telling the initiates what the serum does, and I watch their simulation. That's how it is working this year. Last year, it was Tobias that watched the simulations, and me that told them how it worked, but this year we are switching it around since we want to evenly distribute who does what and how.

Tobias just finished telling Parker how the simulation works, and so he steps aside so that I can go into her simulation with her to observe.

"Wait," she says. "You're going to watch the simulation? How does that work?"

"You have the serum, I have the wires that connect me to it. I won't be in it, unless you're afraid of me, I will just be watching." I pick the needle off the table beside me and hold it up to her neck. "You ready?"

She gulps, and nods. I inject the serum and she closes her eyes instantly. My eyes close as well and we are taken into the simulation.

The plain is empty at first, then it fills with houses. Wait. I recognize these houses. These are the same houses that I used to live so close to, and I can tell that it is only a few blocks away from my old one, in the Abnegation sector. Parker walks the streets alone, walking unlike any Abnegation that I have ever seen. She has a lock of hair fallen out of her bun rebelliously, and she has a slouch to her posture. Such things would be the reason for punishment for the Abnegation, but the people that she passes don't even give her a second glance.

She walks up to a house and opens the door. The scene shifts, and she is inside an Abnegation household that is completely empty, furniture and all. She walks up the stairs into a room to the left of the staircase. When she opens the door, the room is messy, something that would never be tolerated by the Abnegation.

What is going on?

She walks to the bed, that is covered in dirty clothes and crumbs from food. Why would her parents let her do stuff like that? She picks up a shirt, and I realize that this is not her room, but someone else's, someone male, I can tell by the size of the shirt. Her brother, maybe?

Tears fill her eyes and she clutches the shirt close to her chest. "I'm sorry, Adam."

The scene shifts again, and she is standing in the middle of an empty street in the dark. A boy, he has blonde hair, longer than any other boys in Abnegation, and blue eyes, like Parker's. He smiles at her, and then he falls to the ground, a knife stabbed into his back. Parker runs to him.

"Adam!" Her tears fall as she cradles his head on her lap. "Adam, Adam, you're going to be alright…" Blood pools around the boy's body as the life leaves his eyes. His entire body goes limp and Parker lets out a loud cry, then she is in the Pit. The boy's body disappears, and she is sitting on the ground, sobbing. She stands up after sitting for a while. I have never seen the Pit empty, but that is what it is in here. She is standing in the very middle of it, looking around as if paranoid that someone might come and attack her.

But no one comes, at least, not for the first couple of minutes. Then, out of nowhere, hundreds of people wearing Abnegation gray run out from the shadows and charge at her, yelling, "Murderer!" and stuff like that.

"No!" she screams. "No! It—It wasn't me!" They surround her and start grabbing at her. "He was my brother! Why would I do that?! Stop! Please!" She falls to the ground and they start kicking her. "No!" She reaches her hand into the air suddenly and they disappear.

 _It can't be_.

"Wha…?" She stands up completely unharmed. "What is going on?" The scene goes from the Pit to the transfer dorm. Still empty. She walks over to a bed, that I am guessing is hers, and sits down on the edge of it, cradling her head in her hands. "Adam," she mutters. She repeats the name over and over again until she is screaming it at the top of her lungs, clawing at her hair. And then we emerge from the simulation.

She gasps and sits up in the chair, tears on her face and her fingernails digging into the arm rests of the chair.

She opens her mouth to cry out but clamps her hand over her mouth to stop herself, her eyes wide. Her breathing is fast and shaky. If I'm not careful, she is going to pass out.

Too late.

Her eyes roll to the back of her head and she falls back into the chair.

Tobias runs over and checks her pulse. "What happened?" he says. But I can barely hear him. I am too full of shock to think of anything to say.

"Tris?" Tobias says. My mind races, trying to process what just happened. Who was that boy? Her dad? No. He was too young to be her dad. Her brother? Possibly. There were some features in his face that was the same as Parker's.

Tobias is staring at me, waiting for an explanation.

"I'll—I'll tell you later."

After Parker, everyone else have normal fears. Spiders, drowning, being alone, stuff like that. During the rest of the time, I can't help but think about Parker's simulation.

That is, until Drake comes in last, and sees me. When his eyes meet mine, his face turns bright red and I hear Tobias scoff in the corner.

When we are done, and Drake is about to walk out of the room, Tobias touches his shoulder and says something into his ear that I can't hear. Drake's face turns pale and he nods. Tobias watches him leave with a smirk on his face. I wonder what he said… you know what? I don't really want to know.

I decide to keep Parker's fear between Parker, Tobias, and me. I don't want her to think that I am untrustworthy, because I'm not. In fact, if someone trusted me with their greatest fear, I would do as much as I can to keep that fear a secret if they did not want to tell anyone else. Like Tobias did with me.

At dinner, Parker is not there. She is the _only_ transfer that is not there.

That goes on for a couple of days, Parker doesn't arrive for dinner. After three days, I stop eating halfway through my food and decide that I should check on her. I stand up, causing Christina to look up at me. "Where are you going?" she asks.

"I'm full," I lie. It has gotten easier to lie around her, since she isn't in Candor anymore.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'll just go up to my apartment." I walk away. As I go past Tobias's table, our eyes meet, and he nods. He probably knows that I am in fact _not_ going to our apartment, but to the transfer dormitory.

I walk up to the door and push it open, and see Parker sitting on the side of her bed, holding her face in her hands. When she hears me enter, she looks up, startled.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. "Shouldn't everyone be down at dinner?"

"You too?" I respond. "What's been going on?"

"The fear simulation! That's what's been going on!" she says, and I can tell that she is one of those people that yells when she gets frustrated. "The others have been bullying me because of how it's been affecting me, say it's a 'Stiff' thing to be scared like that. But I've heard them at night, whimpering, crying, even _sobbing_. They've denied it, but I know that it's true."

"I understand how you feel," I say.

She looks at me, shocked. "What?"

"I was bullied, too, during initiation. Not because my fears, but because I was small and…" My voice trails off. Is it really a good idea to tell this girl that I was born in Abnegation? "And a Stiff," I manage to finish.

Her eyes turn wide. " _You_ were Abnegation?"

The corner of my mouth turns up a bit. "Well, then, _Stiff_ , turns out you aren't as much of an idiot as I thought you were. Now, what are you going to do about them?" I nod my head to the door just as some of the transfers walk in. I stand up and limp out of the room before she can reply. Not exactly the most dramatic exit, but I can't really walk normally with a broken ankle.

When I enter our apartment, Tobias is in the kitchen, making a snack.

"You _just_ ate dinner, Tobias," I say. I walk over to him as he stands at the counter and wrap my arms around him, pressing my cheek to his back.

"I know," he says, "but I'm still hungry."

I smile and kiss the back of his neck.

"How's your ankle?" he asks.

"Better, I guess. Still hurts like hell, but there's nothing really I can do about that."

He nods and, sighing, turns around toward me. He puts his arms around me, stroking my hair, pulling me closer. Then he kisses me on the forehead and turns and goes back to making food.

I go into the bathroom to take a shower. I close the toilet seat and prop my foot up on it to take off the splint, because it isn't water-proof, which is stupid. I start the water going before I take it off to give it time to heat up. I take the splint off and step into the shower, balancing my weight on only my left foot.

When I get out of the shower, I try not to look at my ankle, but that's pretty impossible to do so while putting the splint on. My ankle is a weird green-ish purple color. Not nearly as bad as when I first hurt it, but still pretty bad.

I go out of the bathroom, holding onto the wall for support, and make my way to our room so that I can go to bed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Tris POV.**

"Hey, Tris," Tobias says, looking through some papers as I sit down on the side of the bed.

"Yeah?" I say.

"You know that girl, Parker?"

"Yeah?" I comb my fingers through my hair.

"Well, what if I told you that she had some… issues during the Aptitude tests?" he says, and my body goes rigid.

"You're joking."

"Her test results needed to be manually put into the system because there was something wrong with the computer." He looks away from the paper and at me, his eyebrows raised. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

I tap my chin. "A lot of it points to that, like her simulations… but then again, she hasn't really done anything that could show it."

"Her simulations. You said they were pretty disturbing, right? Something about a brother dying?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know if it was an event that occurred in real life?"

I shake my head. "I think that something as serious as murder would find the front of some newspapers."

"Right, but it's Abnegation. If someone does something as selfish as taking someone's life, especially if it's self-defense, it would probably be kept a secret."

"True, but the Erudite always find a way to figure out what's going on with the Abnegation. So, if someone really was killed, they would be all over it. They even figured out about you and Marcus, somehow." He winces when I say his abusive father's name.

"Still, people are good at hiding things."

"Yeah…"

 **After training.**

I go to the training room after the simulations because I need something to distract me from viewing all of my initiate's worst fears. The worst part about them is that I can't do anything to help them. I have to just watch as the drown in the water, as they get eaten alive by animals, as they scream out for help. I notice that I have gotten a little taller in the last two years, at least, tall enough that I am not mistaken for a child occasionally.

Parker walks in and approaches me as I stand at the target. "Hey, um, Six?" she says.

"What is it, Stiff?" I answer, loading my gun then aiming it at the target. I can't act like we had a connection, even though we did. I need to act like nothing has changed.

She winces at the word "Stiff." "Can you please not call me that?"

I shrug. "I don't make any promises." I squeeze the trigger and the gun fires, hitting just a couple of inches from the middle of the target. I click my tongue. "Dammit."

"What do you mean, 'dammit'?" she says. "You only missed by inches."

"Still." I click the gun into the chamber and aim again. "What did you want to say, Stiff?"

I fire the gun again and she winces. "Do you really need to be doing that while we're having a conversation?"

"You're the one that walked over to me. I was already doing this." I run out of bullets and go to the knives. I collect six and walk back to the target.

"There's something I need to tell you," she says, following me.

I throw at the target and hit near the middle. Five. "What?"

"It's pretty bad." I throw. Four.

"Just spit it out already." Three.

"You know Drake?" Two.

"Yeah, what about him?" One.

"He has a crush on you." Zero, and it hits the outer rim.

"You think I don't know that, Stiff?" I glance at her from the corner of my eye. "If you're here to figure out whether I like him back or not, you're out of luck."

She tilts her head and follows me as I go back to the guns. "What?"

Keeping my face calm, I load the gun and cock it. "I'm taken." I aim at the target and fire.

"What do you mean, 'taken'? By who?"

"None of your concern," I say, and take a deep breath. _Inhale, aim, exhale, fire_ , I hear Tobias's voice in my mind. Parker covers her ears because the bang of the gun is loud, especially if you hear it so many times in such a short amount of time.

She leans against the wall next to me casually. "So, I'm guessing that it's Four?"

I fire again, keeping myself composed. "Did I say that it was him, Stiff?" I say.

She hesitates. "I also have something else I want to ask."

"What?"

"Can you train me again?"

I look over at her. "Why would you need that? You're already trained during the first part of initiation."

"I know, but I still can't fire a gun for my _life_. I've also noticed that you keep a knife on you, does that mean you're good with knives?"

My hand instinctively moves to my back pocket where my knife is. No one has noticed that I keep a knife with me, not even my closest friends. Tobias is the only one that knows, and he is the only one that knows the reason.

"What's it to you?" I say dangerously.

She takes another step away from me. "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you or anything—"

"Initiate," I say, silencing her. I straighten my posture and look her straight in the eye, the gun that I was holding forgotten on the small table in front of the target. I'm small, but I can be intimidating. I just have to believe that I can be. She stands straighter too, sensing something serious.

"Maybe once you've finished with the _real_ training that I _might_ help you."

"But… why not now?"

"Because the worst is still yet to come." I give her a grim look. "Believe me."

 **Later**.

After Parker leaves the training room, I go over to the punching bag to practice. I wrap my hand and start punching. I need to take my anger out on _something_. That was the second time this initiation that someone asked me to give them private training. I know that Parker asked with a completely different intention than the others, but I still feel like they shouldn't be asking that after already having so much training.

I should have expected something like that, initiates are still naïve when it comes to that sort of stuff, but just the idea of them thinking that they need more practice makes me furious. I've seen them fight, I know how they throw punches, kicks, fire guns, throw knives, all of them. They don't need more training.

A drop of sweat drips down the back of my neck as I punch at the bag.

It is way past the time that I was supposed to leave, but no one else is here, and Tobias is in the control room, and I don't want to go to the apartment without him. I know, it's stupid to be afraid to go back to my own apartment, but I just can't get rid of that tugging sensation that I get in my gut whenever I'm alone there. The feeling of being watched.

Someone taps my shoulder and I turn around suddenly, then sigh when I realize that it is Uriah.

"What are you doing here?" I say and turn back to the punching bag. "It's after hours."

"I was just about to ask the same of you," he says. He hooks his fingers in the chain loops of the punching bag next to me. "Tris, I know when something's wrong with you. I haven't known you for very long, but I know that thing about you." He taps the bag lightly with his knuckles and looks at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, Uriah."

He shakes his head. "Nu-uh. You aren't getting away from it that easily. You never stay in here this late, I have _never_ seen you punch the bag that hard. You're angry about something."

"I'm not. Can you just leave me alone?"

"Um, no!"

"Why?"

"Because I won't leave until you tell me what's wrong."

"I told you it was nothing."

"Come on. Just tell me."

"Fine, if you won't leave then I will." I stop punching and start unwrapping my hands.

He grabs my wrists and stops me. "Tris," he says, "I know you. Something's wrong, and I am asking you to tell me. If you don't want to, then I'm fine with that. This is my last time asking, and if you don't tell me, I'll leave, and you can go back to being mad at a punching bag. But, I'm just saying, that you are acting a lot like Four does when he's angry."

I grit my teeth and pull my hands away from him, then I turn back to the punching bag. "Like I said," I say, holding my arms up to the punching bag, "it's nothing." I start punching again and he gets a wary look on his face.

"If that's how you want it," he says, before leaving the room. As he leaves, Tobias walks in.

 _Great. Just great._ Can't I have just _some_ time alone?

"Tris?" Tobias says. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I say, "why wouldn't I be?"

"You know how late it is?"

I check my watch and see that it's almost midnight.

"Yeah, so?"

" _So_ ," he says, "we have to get up early tomorrow."

"Then, why aren't _you_ asleep?"

"Because _I'm_ the one that needs to wake you up!"

I sigh. "Fine." I unwrap my hands and reveal my bloody knuckles. I do my best to wipe them off.

Tobias stares at them. "How long have you been down here, Tris?" he asks.

"Um… I don't know."

He sighs. "Come on." He takes my arm instead of my hand, for obvious reasons, and guides me up.

* * *

 **Hey guys! I was just wondering if you guys wanted me to do a visiting day chapter. Give a review, and tell me what you think!**

 **And, if you have any more ideas, you could PM me what you think another character's backstory should be!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Tris POV.**

Visiting day. I _hate_ visiting day.

The only person that comes to visit me is Caleb. My mother and father, not so much. After the visiting day where my mom came and started acting strange, she hasn't visited since. And my dad still most likely hates me for switching factions, despite it being two years ago.

Tonight, tonight is the night before visiting day, and I am certain that Caleb is going to be the only one visiting me yet again. I never visit him, since he's Erudite and I _hate_ the Erudite. The only exception is my brother when _he_ visits _me_.

Tobias wraps my hands in bandaging; they are still bleeding a lot.

"I feel like you've been getting hurt a lot lately," he says.

"I hadn't noticed," I say sarcastically.

He rolls his eyes at me. "What I'm saying is that you should be more careful."

"I will."

He raises his eyebrows.

"Seriously!" I say. "I will."

"Okay then." He finishes wrapping my knuckles and I rest my hands on my legs, stretching out my sore arms. I have no idea how long I was in the training room, punching away at the punching bag until my knuckles bled.

Tobias goes to take a shower, and in the time of his absence, though short, uneasiness fills my thoughts.

 **The next morning.**

I go down to the Pit and see some of my initiates with family members and some standing to the side, alone.

I see Percy with a man and a woman that wear black and white Candor clothing and share some of his features, like black hair and hazel eyes. Melissa stands with a man and a woman, and also a boy that looks about her age, maybe a little older. All wearing Candor black and white. Tiffany is having a conversation with a girl that looks younger than her, wearing a red Amity dress. Her sister, I am guessing.

I notice Parker standing at the railing of the Chasm, alone. She doesn't seem to mind that her family didn't come to see her. Marcy is with a man that is most likely her father, wearing Erudite blue. Elena is standing straight as she talks with her mother wearing Abnegation gray. I realize that I recognize them. They were, and maybe still are, friends of my parents. And I've met them before. I hope that they don't recognize me.

Tobias is away at the control room, completely ignoring what's happening in the Pit. He isn't one for visiting days. They remind him of his deranged father.

And then I see Caleb, standing by himself, searching the crowd for me. I reach my hand over my head and wave at him to get his attention. He sees me and starts walking toward me.

I walk to him as normally as I can with a broken ankle and accept his embrace.

"Beatrice," he says. "What happened to your hands?" He grabs my wrist and examines my hands.

"Caleb!" I hiss. "Don't say that name here! My initiates might hear."

"Oh! That's right! You're an initiation instructor this year!"

I sigh and roll my eyes. I suddenly notice Drake staring at me from across the Pit as he stands with his parents wearing Amity red and yellow. Caleb follows my gaze, still holding my wrist, noticing that I am uncomfortable.

"Who's that?" he asks.

I grit my teeth. "Unwanted attention. Let's go somewhere else." I grab his arm and drag him down a corridor into an empty hallway with no security cameras.

"Beatrice? What is it?"

I stop and face him. "You know when I told you, last year, that I was… different?" Last year I told him that I was Divergent when he visited me.

"Yeah? What was it called… Dive—"

"Don't! Say it!" I clamp my hand on his mouth and look around, paranoid.

He pushes my hand away. "Bea—Six, what is going _on_?"

"You remember what I told you, right?"

"Yeah, what—?"

"I have an initiate this year that is the same. I don't know what Factions she got, but she is like me. I need you to research the name: Parker Stewart, okay?"

"Hold on!" He puts his hands up. "I can't just go around searching someone's Aptitude results like that!"

"You're right, which is why you need to do it without telling anyone."

He looks baffled. "Wha—Are you _serious_? I can't do that!"

"Why?"

He bites his lip. "I just…" he sighs. "Fine. I'll do it. I can probably get the information to you if we meet up without anyone else knowing. But I'm only doing this because you asked me to, okay? No other reason."

"Okay. Now, what do you want to do in the short-ass time that we have to see each other?"

As Caleb and I walk across the Pit, I notice Elena approach me with her Abnegation family. I take Caleb's arm and try to get as far away as possible.

"Six!" Elena calls, and it's too late.

"Who's that?" Caleb asks.

"Initiate."

I stand straighter and turn around to face them. "What is it, Stiff?" I say, not caring about the offensive looks her parents give me.

"This is my mom and dad," she says.

"Is that it?"

"Hey," Caleb says. "No need to be rude."

"And who's this?" her mom asks, looking at Caleb. "You seem familiar…"

"I have no idea where you would have ever seen him before," I say. "He's Erudite."

She tilts her head at me. "You also seem familiar." She shakes her head. "Impossible. Are you a transfer to Dauntless?"

"What's it to you?" I cross my arms.

She squints her eyes at me, then her eyes widen, and she lets out a small gasp. " _Beatrice_?" Then she looks at Caleb again. " _Caleb_?"

I look at her blankly. "Who?"

"Yeah, who?" Elena says, turning to her mother.

"I could be wrong, but I _never_ forget a face. You are Beatrice Prior," she points at me, then points at Caleb, "and you are Caleb Prior."

"Seriously, I have _no_ idea who you are talking about," I say. "And if you every mistake me for a Stiff again, that will be the _last_ thing you do. C'mon." I beckon to Caleb and he follows me around a corner. When we get to the other side, I lean against the wall and heave a sigh. "That was _too_ close," I say, and I press my hand to my forehead. "And in front of one of my initiates as well… I hope she doesn't put anything together."

Caleb stands in front of me. "What's wrong with people figuring out you're from Abnegation?"

"Because," I say, "It'll ruin my reputation. My initiates would start not listening to me, stop taking me seriously."

"Are you sure?"

I give him a look. "You haven't met my initiates, Caleb. You don't know what they're like."

He noticeably shivers. "So… what are you going to do about it?"

"Well, if Elena believes her mom, then I'll have to… talk some sense into her before she lets it spread like wildfire."

"Talk some sense?"

"You don't want to know. The Dauntless—we do things… _differently_ here."

"Like what?" I flash him a look and he concedes. "Right. I don't want to know."

The rest of the day, we just hang around the Pit until it's time for Caleb to leave.

"Come visit me again next visiting day, okay?" I say, giving him a hug.

He holds me tightly for a few seconds before pulling away and saying, "I will. And I'll also research that initiate that you were talking about. What's her name, Parker Stewart, right?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry to ask this of you Caleb. You don't have to if you don't want to."

"Well, I'm a curious guy." He grins. "I'll do it."

"Really? Thank you."

We say our goodbyes and he goes up the Pit to leave.

A couple minutes later, Tobias appears next to me. "Hey," he says. "How was it with Caleb?"

"Good. I told him to research the test results for Parker."

"Alright."

We start to walk back, but I trip over my hurt ankle. All that walking around I did today must have done more to it than I thought.

"Are you okay?" Tobias helps me up.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

I can tell he doesn't believe me, and it's understandable. The throbbing pain in my ankle is most likely very visible on my face. He puts an arm around my waist to support me as we go up the Pit.

* * *

 **Hey guys. The lack of reviews is kind of suggesting that it's not as good as I want it to be... I've sort of been lagging behind and I'm sorry about how late that this is being uploaded. I'm also sorry about how short it is, since it took so long for me to write it, but I've also been stuck doing other things in my life. Sorry again, and feel free to give constructive criticism. I don't mind. Tell me about the things you like about it, or don't like about it, if you think I should try putting a change in my writing technique or anything of the sort, and I'll see if I can do anything about it. Maybe you could even say if you want something to happen? Or maybe what you think I should change about the older chapters? I really need your feedback, guys.**


	9. Chapter 9

**Tris POV.**

I can't get the idea out of my head that it's one of the initiates watching me.

Ever since I've been getting the feeling of being watched when I'm alone in my apartment, I've been very wary of each of them. They all have something about them that just gives me a feeling of uneasiness… something I can't figure out.

As Tobias and I walk to our apartment, we encounter Elena in the hall. She is leaning against the wall as if she is waiting for me to show up.

When she sees me, she stops leaning on the wall and looks at me, her eyes insistent. "Can I talk to you about something, Six?" she says.

I turn to Tobias. "You go ahead. I'll be right there."

He hesitates. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, it's fine."

He bites his lip. "Alright then." He lets go of my waist and goes on ahead.

"So," Elena says when Tobias is out of earshot. "I had a feeling you two were together. It's just plain obvious."

I cross my arms. "Your point, initiate?"

"I was there when my mom recognized you. I never thought to put the pieces together, since you look so different then you did then. You have a tattoo, your hair's shorter, I never would have suspected you would be Beatrice Prior."

I glance at the security camera on the opposite wall. "Careful," I say under my breath. Tobias told me that the camera's are monitored 24/7, that anyone can just click into the feed and listen in to what we are talking about.

She frowns. "Careful?"

I keep my eyes on the wall, trying to figure out a place that is hidden from the camera's.

An idea comes to mind and I beckon for her to follow. She does after getting a confused look on her face.

I take her somewhere that there are no cameras. No possibility that someone can listen in.

We stop in a dark hallway. Just dark enough that no one will notice us on first glance, but light enough that we can see each other.

"You're not supposed to talk about old Factions here," I say.

"So? Were you Abnegation?"

I don't answer.

" _Well_?"

"It doesn't matter. This is where I am now. Something you would do well to remember yourself." I put an edge in my voice. I know that my initiates are afraid of me. I can use that to my advantage.

She points at me, recognition sparking in her eyes. "I _knew_ I recognized you," she says. "I've met you before. You're that one girl with the attitude that I saw. I don't remember it very well, but I remember that you had long hair and was wearing gray instead of black."

I roll my eyes, crossing my arms. "Oh, I wonder why."

"I heard about you… you switched to Dauntless and no one knew why."

"Did I ever say that I was this Beatrice lady?" I say. "You really have a delusional Stiff family."

"Oh, you're good. But I know you're lying."

 _Not working_. She doesn't believe me.

I reach into my back pocket and clamp my hand around the knife. She notices and takes a step back, her back pressing into the stone wall. I pull the knife out and hold it out in front of me, balancing it in my palm.

"Now, initiate," I say, and I spin the knife in my palm. "I trust that you won't be giving false information to the rest of my initiates? Because, if so…" I throw the knife and she flinches as it leaves a tiny cut on her cheek and lodges itself into the wall. I walk toward her and grab the handle, leaning my face close to her ear. " _It'll be the last thing you do_ ," I hiss.

She sucks in a breath. "It's too late, I already told Cloe, and she's the one that spreads the rumors." She smiles. "Don't you think it would be a problem if you harmed little old me after I already let it spread?"

I pluck the knife out the wall and clench my hand around it. "Then maybe I'll just put it somewhere no one will see," I say.

Her eyes widen. "You wouldn't do that, would you?"

I spin the knife between my fingers then in one fast motion shove her against the wall with my arm and hold the knife up against her throat. She winces as her head hits the wall with a snap.

"You don't know me, initiate," I hiss. "You don't know what I can do to people that don't listen." I press the knife harder against her throat, for a second actually contemplating slicing it open.

I squint my eyes at her, but before I find myself slitting her throat, I am lowering my hand. "No, I wouldn't," I say, answering her question. "I don't attack against someone defenseless, no matter how much I want to kill you right here." I lean in close again, readopting the dangerous tone. "I'll see you in the arena sometime soon."

"What are you talking about, Beatrice?"

Anger flares behind my eyes and I curl the front of her shirt in my fist and pull her down so my face is close to hers. "Don't. _Ever_. Call me _Beatrice_. I left that name behind a _long_ time ago," I say into her ear.

Then someone appears at the end of the hallway. "Elena?" they say. I recognize the voice as Percy. "What's going on over here?"

I let her go and brush her shirt back. "Just having a little _chat_ ," I say.

I walk away from them, and as I turn a corner, I see out of the corner of my eye Elena use her sleeve to wipe the blood from her cheek as she glares at me.

I go up the Pit and get back to the apartment not long later, and Tobias is already there. When he sees me so agitated, he walks over to me and smooths my hair down. "What happened?"

I take a deep breath. "It's a long story."

When I finish telling him all about it, he doesn't seem too surprised, but he also seems angry.

"So, her mom recognized you and Caleb, told Elena about it, Elena confronted you about it but had already told everyone about It," he sums up.

Sighing, I move one on the chairs from the table so it faces him and sit down, putting my head in my hands.

"Tobias, I don't know what to do," I say.

He kneels down in front of me and takes my face in his hands. "C'mon, Tris," he says. "You'll be fine; so what if people know your real name? That doesn't change a thing about you. Sure, people will know that you're from Abnegation, but I know you can prove to them you left that behind. You've proved it before by passing first in initiation, having only six fears in the landscape, _and_ having an aptitude for _three_ factions."

"Yeah, but nobody knows about that last one."

" _But_ , they still happen to know the first two, and that alone should be enough." He puts his thumbs under my chin and tilts my head up so our foreheads connect, his index fingers sliding behind my ears. "You also don't need to prove yourself for people to know you are amazing."

I find myself smiling. "Thank you."

He grins.

He goes into the other room not long later, and I am alone in the living room. It doesn't bother me, it seems that whatever or whoever has been watching me is only there when Tobias isn't in the apartment entirely.

I shake my head and lean back into the chair. Elena has already told everyone, and that most likely means that people are going to start underestimating me again, just like they did during initiation. Because I'm from Abnegation, and the Abnegation would _never_ hurt _anyone_ , and just the thought of that makes me want to throw up. When I think about people hurting someone in Abnegation, the first person that comes to mind is _Marcus_. Tobias's abusive father. Just thinking about what he did to Tobias when he was a kid…

A shiver goes down my spine. Tobias has told me about some of the things he did, and I had glimpses of it when I went into his fear landscape. Seeing just those small things terrified me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be Tobias in those situations.

I never had the experience of being abused by one of my family members, and I hope I never will.

Who am I kidding? I will probably never see either of my parents again. My brother, maybe, but not my mom and dad. They would never visit me after joining Dauntless. My mom did, once, but that was just to warn me to be careful about my Divergence. A warning that I have gotten too many times to comprehend.

"Tris," Tobias says, and I only just realize that he walked back into the room.

"Hm?"

"You okay? You were zoning out there for a moment."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just lost in thought." I cross my arms and rest my head against the wall as I bend my neck to look at him.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Oh, you know… Abnegation I guess." I shrug. "I think talking to Elena made me think about it more."

He walks over to the table and picks up the knife. He holds it much more comfortably than anyone else that I have seen. He spins it in his palm absentmindedly. "I didn't know you still kept this with you," he says.

I shrug. "It's just in case something happens."

His expression turns grim as he examines it. No doubt remembering the reason that I started carrying it in the beginning. When Peter, Drew, and Al attacked me. Peter and Drew are still in Dauntless, Peter guards the fence and so does Drew. I never see them anymore, but the fact that they once tried to do that to me still gets my blood boiling. But it was one of the things that made me fall for Tobias, and I don't regret that in the slightest.

And that's when I hear it: a loud thud, like something falling to the floor, in the kitchen. Tobias immediately tenses, now holding the knife in front of his as if waiting for a chance to use it.

"What was that?" he says. I stand up from the chair and move towards the kitchen with Tobias. I look around the corner and see something on the floor. I go to pick it up. A shoe. I hold it out in front of me. Small. The person it belongs to definitely isn't me or Tobias. It is Dauntless black, obviously. But the inside is worn and the tread is almost ripped to shreds.

I hand it to Tobias so he can take a look, but he just shakes his head.

"Was somebody _here_?" I say, looking up at him.

"I don't know," he says, "but I think we should search the apartment."


	10. Chapter 10

**Tris POV.**

Nothing. Tobias and I come up with nothing after we search the apartment.

"Whoever it was that was here is long gone by now," I say. We start down the steps to the Pit.

I realize that, maybe it's a bit irrational to fear my initiates to know that I am from Abnegation, but maybe it's just because I don't want to be seen as weak. And lately, I've been feeling pretty weak, and paranoid, and not like myself. Not so much an irrational fear if there's a reason for it.

We've already requested a new apartment, but I have no idea how long it will take for that to happened; how many nights of sleeping somewhere that is unsafe.

Our initiates are waiting in the training room for us to show them the fear landscape and what it's about. Well, at least they know to be ready for us to get there. Tobias tells them that we are going to show them something important, and proceeds to lead the way. Tobias in the front of the group, me trailing behind them. They still glance at me with uneasiness painted all over their faces, but I have learned to ignore it.

As I walk behind everyone, I notice something. One of the initiates is wearing a new pair of shoes, and that initiate is Drake. But… that doesn't add up. His feet are way bigger than the shoe size that Tobias and I found. He would have had to purposefully take the shoes of someone else that's smaller and drop it deliberately, and I know that he isn't _that_ smart. It has to be a coincidence or something of the sort.

We get to the top of the stairs and walk across the glass, reaching the fear landscape room. At least none of these initiates have a fear of heights, at least, from what I see from watching them.

I stand behind the group, watching as Tobias gives the same lecture about the fear landscape as he did when he showed my group: "This, is a different kind of simulation known as the fear landscape. It has been disabled for out purposes, so this isn't what it will be like the next time you see it."

It's strange that Tobias can memorize this word-for-word. He even has the same glint in his eye as he did when he told me about it.

"Through your simulations, we have stored data about your worst fears. The fear landscape accesses that data and presents you with a series of virtual obstacles. Some of the obstacles will be fears you previously faced in your simulations. Some may be new fears. The difference is that you are aware, in the fear landscape, that it is a simulations, so you will have all your wits about you as you go through it."

I enjoy seeing this side of Tobias. He never really does it around the people he knows, but in front of new initiates, he uses his skills very well and doesn't care how serious he gets. He is intimidating in front of people he plans to leave an impression of himself in. It's quite charming.

"The number of fears you have in your landscape varies according to how many you have. I told you before that the third stage of initiation focuses on mental preparation," he says. That is because it requires you to control both your emotions and your body-to combine the physical abilities you learned in stage two. To keep a level head. Next week you will go through your fear landscape as quickly as possible in front of a panel of Dauntless leaders. That will be your final test, which determines your ranking for stage three. Just as stage two of initiation is weighted more heavily than stage one, stage three is weighted heaviest of all. Understood?"

The initiates, not seeming to really know what to say, nod, as everyone did in my initiation as well. Many of them look terrified.

"You can get past each obstacle in one of the two ways. Either you find a way to calm down enough that the simulations registers a normal, steady heartbeat, or you find a way to face your fear, which can force the simulation to move on. One way to face a fear of drowning is to swim deeper, for example," Tobias says.

I remember him saying that to my group as well. I think he writes down what he is going to say and reviews it before training initiates to make sure he doesn't leave anything out. I saw him earlier today looking through a piece of paper while sitting near the chasm. That must be what it was, maybe.

Tobias dismisses them and they all walk out, one by one. As Drake passes by in front of me, he looks at me and I glance down at his shoes. Maybe... hopefully not, but maybe.

He is out of sight before I can inspect him any longer.

Tobias approaches me. "You alright?" He brushes some hair out of my face.

I sigh and smile at him. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just... stressed, I guess."

He touches my cheek, leaning forward and kissing me. "I get it. We'll figure it out, alright?"

I nod."Okay."

He puts a hand against the wall behind me, getting closer. He kisses me, pressing me against the wall and putting a hand on my waist. I kiss him back, but before anything else can happen, I slip away from between him and the wall. "You know," I say. "I think we should do something together. We haven't really been able to do stuff like that lately, you know?"

"What do you mean?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Do you want to take a walk later?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sure."

I smile. "Alright then. Meet you by the chasm in an hour. I have someone I need to talk to."

* * *

 **Sorry that it's been a super long time, guys. I've lost a lot of inspiration lately. But I hope that this chapter was good for how long it took me to make it. Apologies for the wait.**


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